


Vague Sense of Peace

by Lusethxii



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 17:19:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2589806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lusethxii/pseuds/Lusethxii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>High school days of bad phone photos, note passing, and incomprehensible homework.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vague Sense of Peace

It is early morning; Kaneki is rubbing sleep out of his eyes while Hide chatters excitedly beside him. The blond still has bed hair, but Kaneki doesn’t bother pointing it out because Hide is too caught up in talking about his new phone. Bright orange, metallic finish with a screen as big as his entire phone, it was every bit as flashy as Hide himself. Kaneki sighed as Hide unlocked the phone, probably for the fifth time, just to show him some app.

“ _This is the new generation huh_ ,” the brunette thinks to himself.

“It has a front camera!” Hide says, turning the screen towards Kaneki, momentarily startling the boy.

“Okay..?” Kaneki feels weird seeing his own face on the screen.

“Hey Kaneki! Let’s take a picture together!” Hide suggests, but it was more of a demand, because he quickly swings his arm around Kaneki, pulling the flustered boy close. Kaneki struggles to get away, but his best friend has already stuck a pose so the poor boy does his best to smile for the camera at least.

A sound of the shutter later, Hide opens the photo with great enthusiasm. Unfortunately, they didn’t make the most photogenic pair. Kaneki’s smile was awkward, he wasn’t looking at the camera and a small pink tinge hung on his cheeks. The boy hated how easily a blood rush showed up on his pale face, and how his smile always came out so painfully awkward on photographs. Hide laughs, and Kaneki retorts that he was caught off guard and

“Your eyes weren’t even open!”

Hide looks at the photo again – he was focused on Kaneki earlier, and finally took a good look at himself. The blond held his usual grin plus a peace sign atop his best friend’s (slightly flushed) face but his eyes were, indeed, completely closed.

“You weren’t looking at the camera either!” Hide retorts, making a weak attempt to defend himself.

“Wasn’t I supposed to look at the screen?”

 Hide laughs, noting that his friend was not the most informed when it came to technology.

“It’s at the top right, silly!”

“Yea anyway, delete that photo! It’s horrible…” The longer Kaneki stares at the picture, the more he wants it to disappear forever.

“Nope! I’m gonna keep it. It’s the first picture we took together with my new phone!”

\--

At break time Hide takes out his phone again, and finds himself opening the picture they took in the morning. Kaneki is reading, making use of the last ten minutes of lunch to make good progress through his book. As usual Hide is left to his own devices, and he quickly tires of fiddling with his phone (all he learnt was how to turn off the shutter sound on the phone). The boy turns his attention to his bookworm friend, who is completely engrossed in his book. So engrossed that he probably won’t notice if Hide snuck a photo.

Hide knows that Kaneki has been camera shy since he was young, always getting flustered and overly conscious of himself – from the way his bangs fell across his face to how he should pose his clammy hands. Looking at him now, however, the brunette is a picture of calm, and a smile slips easily onto his lips as he reads a clever part. Without thinking, Hide snaps a few candid pictures of his friend. They are good, way more natural than the one from the morning. Hide loves this side of Kaneki, the quiet and focused boy who lost himself in words. The calm boy whose voice didn’t catch in his throat, whose blood didn’t flush his face, whose hands gently held the book without sweating or shaking, and who was able to smile easily.

“Hide?” Kaneki looks up from his book. “Were you texting someone?”

“Huh?” Hide tears his eyes from the screen to meet Kaneki’s.

“You were smiling…so I thought…”

“Oh, it was nothing,” Hide assures. He probably let a smile slip unconsciously.

\--

Back in class the two of them are quickly growing bored. It is trigonometry, and the teacher is going through the questions that both Kaneki and Hide have already solved. Numbers and letters gradually dull into a stream of noise as the two stare lazily into space.

Hide tears a sheet of paper from his notebook and begins to write. Then he folds it up as small as it can go, fits it into the palm of his hand and slips it to Kaneki. At first Kaneki is perplexed, but he unfolds the paper anyway and reads Hide’s note.

_Class is sooo boring!_

Kaneki smiles. Typical. He looks up, checking that the teacher’s attention is focused elsewhere, and writes a reply. He folds it up the same way, and passes it back to Hide.

_Yea this class is boring… I wish I could read._

Hide is amused by Kaneki’s quick reply. The two continue to exchange notes as the class goes on.

_That incomprehensible book during break?_

_It’s not ‘incomprehensible’… You’ll get it if you try harder…_

_Yea anyway, don’t you think -_

Kaneki glances up quickly, realizing that the teacher had turned around and was making rounds and checking homework. He slides Hide’s note under the desk and tries to read the rest of it.

_Don’t you think the teacher sort of looks like a Christmas tree? Red shirt and green pants lol._

Below there is a doodle of their teacher as a Christmas tree. The doodle catches Kaneki off guard, like all of Hide’s drawings, and the boy accidentally lets out a giggle. Their teacher turns around, clears his throat audibly as Kaneki swallows the last of his chuckles.

“What are you doing?”

“I-I’m sorry! I-” Kaneki stammers, the words getting caught in his throat as his head fills with hot embarrassment. While struggling for an excuse, he was cut off by the loud clatter of his neighbor rising from their seat.

“It was me! I passed it to him. I started it. He- Kaneki didn’t do anything wrong.”

The Christmas-themed teacher stares at Hide.

“You too? Nagachika?”

Hide nods, and doesn’t break the eye contact.

The teacher sighs, decides not to give a lecture, and simply assigns extra work to the both of them.

\--

“I’m so sorry Hide…”

“I already said, it’s okay!” Hide assures him, for the eighth time as they enter the library. Kaneki still looks upset, so Hide sighs and puts an arm around him, steering him towards the seats at the end of the room. They settle down side-by-side, and pull out the extra worksheets they received as punishment.

While he skipped the lecture, the teacher didn’t go easy on them, and assigned several challenging problems. After a few problems, they start to slow down, going into a lull. Hide puts on his earpiece and starts doodling in Kaneki’s textbook, which they were sharing, as he tries to understand the lengthy math problem. Kaneki has given up on work, declaring a break time for himself after getting stuck for nearly ten minutes. He reaches for his phone and starts playing with it, vaguely recalling the morning’s events. The brunette rests his head on the table, looking through his phone and noting how dated the display looks compared to Hide’s. While it doesn’t have half the apps in his friend’s mobile, it still has a camera, and Kaneki opens it.

After a half second delay, the screen settles and Hide falls into frame. Kaneki’s breath catches; he’s oddly ashamed and his mind is telling him to switch out of camera mode, to put his phone away and go back to work. But he doesn’t. Instead he continues staring at his best friend from the screen of his phone. Hide usually has a playful grin with eyes scrunched up from the wide smile. Right now the blond adorns a serious look; a slight frown in his brow and eyes focused on the work at hand. It was rare to see Hide like that, or maybe Kaneki just never noticed.  


While he took in Hide’s expression, his hand moves unconsciously to snap a photo. There was a soft click of shutter. Kaneki froze up, waiting for Hide to react and ready to delete the photo. There was no reaction from his friend, except perhaps a slight flinch, but he neither turned nor said a word. So Kaneki assumed he was safe, relaxed, and checked the photo. It was surprisingly clear, and captured the expression that seemed to entice Kaneki for those few minutes. His finger hovered over the ‘delete’ option – he feared being found out, it was inanely embarrassing. But he resisted, because it seemed like he couldn’t really bear to. Kaneki slips the phone back into his pocket and returns his attention to his work. The same frustrating question looks back at him – the words still don’t make much sense; he can’t put his finger on which formula or even which approach to take, and he’s too lazy to try.

“Hide?” Kaneki calls softly, turning over to his friend.

Hide doesn’t respond.

“ _His music is probably pretty loud, so he can’t hear me,_ ” Kaneki thinks. He shifts his seat and leans closer to Hide and as he does he can hear the faint melody from his earpiece. Kaneki can’t make out the words (he thinks it’s probably English anyway) but the tune is nice, so he bends closer to listen to it more. Then he stumbles a little, and lands his head on Hide’s shoulder.

Kaneki stiffens in surprise. He knows he should move away quickly and mumble an apology except that he doesn’t. Instead he lingers for a couple of seconds. Maybe his head just feels heavier today or he’s weird, he doesn’t quite know. He’s waiting for Hide to say something – surely he can feel the extra weight on his shoulder? But there’s nothing, well except the muffled track from Hide’s earpiece.

Why isn’t Hide saying anything? Is he so lost into the world of trigonometry that he’d lost his sense of touch? Kaneki glances over at Hide, apprehension tightening his chest and that goddamn blush he can never control rising in his cheeks. Instead of saying something, Hide just shifts his seat, moving closer to Kaneki so their legs are brushing. He also angles his torso so Kaneki’s head is resting in the crook of Hide’s neck instead. The new adjustments are pleasant, but his ears still burn red, so Kaneki is forced to turn away from Hide who still has his eyes on the worksheet anyway.

“What’s the song? Is it English?” Kaneki whispers. Kaneki is so close to Hide he can catch wisps of lyrics, and he is sure that Hide can hear him.

“Yea, it’s Air supply,” Hide replies. He removes one side of his earpiece and lets Kaneki listen to it.

“I like it,” Kaneki mutters into Hide’s neck.

Suddenly Kaneki feels sleepy. He settles against the crevice of Hide’s neck and lets his eyelids fall shut, the lashes brushing against Hide’s skin. Stray dark hair pokes at the blond’s ear, but he doesn't mind at all. He lets his friend rest while he finishes up the last few questions.

“Comfortable huh?” Hide remarks, turning toward Kaneki.

“Mmm.” Kaneki, knowing of the mortification visible all over his face, simply hums in reply.

“Finished yours?” Hide’s eyes flickers to Kaneki’s paper on the table, abandoned long ago.

There is a pause.

Kaneki lifts his head, a little reluctantly, and sits back into his chair. He turns toward Hide to say something, but he loses the words when he makes notice of Hide’s shirt. Specifically, what he did to Hide’s shirt – visibly crumpled where Kaneki had nuzzled his face into.  Kaneki rubs the side of his face, which is red with matching crease marks.

“Um, sorry about your shirt.”

“It’s okay.” Hide rubs his neck, which has turned a few shades redder. The tip of his ear is red as well, so Kaneki gathers that the redness was embarrassment.

“Do you need my homework?”

‘No thanks’ is on the tip of his tongue, but Kaneki decides to accept the help and says he would refer to Hide’s work. They have to stay a little later to let Kaneki finish up his work, but Hide doesn’t mind. He props his head up against the desk and watches Kaneki, relishing in the peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the Hidekane support group for some of the ideas in this fic!


End file.
